Wednesday, November 5, 2014

The United States government has just been purchased by the rich....and the world will reel from the change

The American political system, indeed the American culture, the American environment and even the loudy touted "American Freedom".....they are all for sale!
And the price, in this round of elections, was approximately $4 Billion....that is the amount that was spent by both parties in advertising, now that all limits on personal and corporate donations have been thrown out by the Supreme Court's decision commonly known as "Citizens United".
Republicans now control both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Republicans were the very ones who blocked all attempts to pass legitimate legislation ever since the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Republican leaders met on the very night of his first election to plan how they would sabotage everything he tried to do so long as he occupied the White House. Some of the spill-over from this electoral defeat of the Democratic control in the Senate include the likely passage of a bill to give the green light to the Keystone Pipeline, proposed to convey tar sands oil, unrefined from Canada to Texas for both refining and export from there. Environmentalists will be appalled, given the extent to which they have committed to campaigning against the project.
The real question then seems to be, "Will the president veto such a bill?"
There will likely be proposals from the Republicans to up the ante in military terms against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria, in spite of the evidence that emerged this week indicating that the American prisoner of war camp Bucca in Iraq, as part of the second Iraq war, was the location for incipient jihadists met, planned and became enraged against America and then joined with the disbanded Iraqi army trained and operated by Saddam Hussein. This new merged force combines intense anger with professional competence and discipline to create a force that has just this week captured high powered anti-tank weapons left by the Americans in support of the Syrian rebels who have been fighting against the president of Syria, Assad. The Syrian rebels surrendered to the ISIS jihadists, and their weapons were immediately commandeered. That single and simple incident is a warning sign of things to come.
The Koch Brothers, one of the more prominent sources of Republican candidates, along with a right-wing agenda, will now cash in their 'chips' at the expense of the middle class, the environment, the labour movement, and the social security network, as privatization rises to the top of the political agenda, thereby enhancing the commodification of not only American products and services but also American values.
We are watching the sell-off of those things considered integral to the American "progress" over the last two centuries, fostered and nurtured by Republican and Democratic presidents and politicians. Remember when it was reasonable, and even fashionable, for political leaders in both parties to consider the whole population when considering legislation, to consider the long-term future of the people and the nation, when it was considered prudent to protect the rights of workers, including the right to unionize and to bargain collectively, to ensure that poor children were well fed and well educated as part of the national pursuit of scientific, artistic and professional excellence among the nations of the world, to ensure a woman's right to choose, to provide ready access to all American children to a college education, to ensure that workers were entitled to reasonable remuneration, as well as some stability in their employment future.....these are all now threatened.....unless the Democratic movement rises from the slough of this current political climate and takes both both houses of Congress as well as the White House in 2016.
Of course, that is merely wishful thinking on the part of this scribe....but today is a day when the honour and the political reputation of the American electorate have been squandered on votes for a party whose recent history demonstrates dangerous trends that could hollow out the core of the American middle class even further, rape the remaining health of the environment, dismantle the historic right to organize and bargain collectively and impose a set of tax laws that inordinately
favour the rich.
How long will it be before the vast majority of the American electorate wakes up, takes to the streets and demands the termination of Republican/oligarchic attitudes, debates and even legislation?